Chapter 3
CHAPTER THREE
When I walked into the kitchen, Emerald was squirming in Jan’s arms. She picked me out and smiled at me. Whether she knew it was me or not, I wasn’t sure. I was getting the feeling she liked me—which suggested a lifetime of bad choices waiting for her.
“Is the plow guy coming?” I asked. It had snowed most of the time I was gone. “I could barely make it up the driveway.”
“He comes when there’s four inches, you know that,” Nana Cole said. “You could have taken the Escalade. It’ll drive through most anything.”
I took the baby from Jan, and Emerald let out a tiny squeal. The sound that meant she was happy. Yup, I thought, if I’m what makes her happy, the kid is doomed.
The kitchen smelled like spaghetti sauce, and in one corner Riley was asleep in a dog bed I’d gotten him.
“Did you let Riley out?” I asked my grandmother who was standing by the stove stirring a giant pot, her cane in one hand.
“Oh yes, he did a nice big number two,” Jan answered for her. She was the youngest of Nana Cole’s friends and the most religious. She wore a big fuzzy sweater buttoned to her neck. Even for January she looked over-dressed.
“Thank you.”
“Well, I should get going. I’ve got my own dinner to make,” she said, standing up. She was single, a spinster, as my Nana Cole called her behind her back, so she might have been fishing for a dinner invite. It didn’t come.
Jan was over by the coat hook next to the back door. I decided to sneak something in before she left. “Nana, have you heard from my mother?”
She gave me a sharp look and said, “She calls when she calls.”
I glanced at Jan, trying to read her face. If my mother had called, I wouldn’t be surprised if Nana Cole told her friends and not me. Jan looked a little cowed, but that might have been the tension in the room.
“I’ll see you Friday, Emma,” she said, then slipped out the door.
I put the baby in the car seat. I really wanted the seat to work, because if I did something crazy like go the bathroom and Nana Cole managed to knock the whole thing off the table, the baby would be fine.
The seat was so sturdy, I was sure the whole house could fall down and Emerald would be just fine sitting in the seat amid the rubble.
I said I had to go upstairs and make a phone call, so I scurried out of the kitchen before Emerald could begin to fuss.
On the way, I worried about my mother. A few days after New Year’s, a Christmas a box had arrived with a Chicago postmark and no return address.
Inside were some baby clothes that wouldn’t fit Emerald for at least a year, a couple of toys she could have choked on, and a photograph of my mother and her boyfriend, David Hounsell.
She wore a silky pale blue dress and held a small bouquet in her hands while he stood there, three-piece suit and slicked back hair looking like a poor man’s Michael Douglas.
On the back it said, ‘Mr. and Mrs. David Hounsell, 12/21/2003.”
They were standing in a living room. The furniture was covered in a dusty pink fabric and the end tables were made of thick, whitewashed wood.
I could see bits of the floor, which was tiled in terra cotta.
They weren’t in Chicago. They were somewhere in the Southwest. So why the Chicago postmark?
Did they go to Chicago on their honeymoon?
That didn’t make sense. It was the middle of the winter. My mother hated winter.
She’d told me they weren’t getting married because things were complicated. Now that they were married, were things uncomplicated? And how did they get uncomplicated?
In my bedroom, I got out my cell phone, scrolled through until I found Ham’s name and hit send.
“Yeah.”
“It’s me. Henry.”
“Yeah, I know. What’s up?”
“I went to Three Friends and spoke to Melanie.”
“What did you think?”
“There’s a discrepancy.”
“Okay. We like those.”
“In her statement Roberta said she was walking from the toilet to the sink when she may have slipped on some water. But Melanie said the water was running in the sink. That suggests she made it to the sink and didn’t fall until after she’d turned the water on.”
“Good, that’s exactly what we’re looking for.”
“Should I go talk to her and see what she says about it?”
“No. Don’t go anywhere near her. The lawyers will ask the questions. They’re going to want her answers under oath. And we don’t want to give her time to come up with any plausible lies.”
“Tomorrow I’m going to talk to one of the Three Friends employees and probably one of Roberta’s friends.”
“Careful when you talk to her friends. Try to let them do the talking. You don’t want to say anything that will get back to Roberta.”
“Okay.” That was a bit nerve-racking. “Um… can I ask you a personal question?”
“About me? No. I’m none of your business.”
“No, I mean about me. About my mother. She got married.”
I told him all about the package and my theory that she was in the Southwest somewhere despite the Chicago postmark.
This was really the only clue I had about my mother’s movements other than my grandmother’s Escalade being found just over the border in Indiana a week after my mother drove off in it.
“I’ve been keeping an eye out since you told me she ran off. Your stepfather’s—”
“Please don’t use that word.”
“David’s company, Hounsell Income Technologies, has filed for bankruptcy.”
“How does that work? I mean, you said it’s a hedge fund, which means people give you their money and you’re supposed to make money for them and if you don’t they lose money. Isn’t that all there is to it?”
“Yes and no. Bankruptcy just means you owe more than you have, and you don’t think you’ll ever catch up.”
“So, basically, he lost all his investors’ money?”
“Possibly. Corporate bankruptcy can be a strategy. It does mean someone’s going to get screwed.”
“Do you have any idea where they are?”
“They could still be in California. Out in the desert, possibly San Diego. As nearly as I can tell he sold his boat right before he filed for bankruptcy. If that money went into his own pocket, they’ll try to claw it back in the bankruptcy, but that could take years.”
“Los Angeles is probably too expensive for them, so they might have rented someplace cheaper,” I guessed.
“Your mother doesn’t want you to know where she is. I doubt they rented an apartment. They’re on the move.”
“Like… on the run?”
“My guess would be that David screwed the wrong investor.”
Village Books opened at ten in the morning.
I would have liked to have gotten there at exactly ten, but Nana Cole’s physical therapy was at ten fifteen, and then she was tired afterward and then there was lunch which I had to make—a tuna fish sandwich for Nana Cole and a bottle of formula for the baby.
By the time I was ready to eat my own sandwich, it was time to clean up and argue about the radio.
“I don’t understand why I can’t listen to the radio in my own home.”
“You can. Just not when I’m in the room.”
“You do remember that you’re not paying room and board?”
“You do remember that you’re not paying me for childcare or any of the other six million things I do for you?”
Okay, I didn’t do six million things for her, but I did do a lot and she knew it. Quietly she said, “Your mother owes you for the childcare, not me.”
“Whatever. I don’t think it’s too much to ask that I not have to listen to people like Dr. Laura and your friend Rush say horrible things.”
“I happen to believe the same things they believe.”
“Then you don’t need to listen to them. You can be horrible all on your own.”
I was probably being a little dramatic. Nana Cole wasn’t exactly horrible. Yes, she believed horrible things, but she also didn’t believe politics had much to do with real people. She thought her opinions were harmless. I wasn’t as sure.
Bev and Barbara showed up at two. Normally, this was when I’d take a little nappy-poo.
Instead, sleepy-eyed, I drove to Masons Bay and parked in front of Village Books.
The bookstore had four connected rooms on one half of the first floor of what had once been a nice home.
The conservancy where I’d once worked was located on the back side of the house.
A bell rang above my head when I entered the store.
Even though it had changed hands twice since my last visit, the bookstore looked pretty much the same.
There were books everywhere, including stacked on chairs and on the floor.
As you walked in there was a counter with an antique cash register and a display of the bestsellers The Da Vinci Code, To the Nines and The Five People You Meet in Heaven.
There were only two things that were different about the bookstore.
One was a bookcase near the door that was entirely devoted to romance novels, with a sign that said, ‘WE NOW CARRY ROMANCE!’ surrounded by hearts.
The other different thing was a stack of the book Slander: Liberal Lies About the American Right by Ann Coulter with a handprinted sign on top designating 50% OFF!
Penny Pelletier sat on a stool behind the counter. She was in her mid-thirties with peachy skin and thin colorless hair. Stereotypically, she wore glasses, and also wore an apron with many of the pins she sold attached. READERS DO IT BY THE BOOK stood out.
“Welcome to Village Books!” she said brightly.
“Hi, I’m Mo—Henry Milch. I’m an investigator working with Hamlet Gilbody…”
Okay, so I gave myself a promotion. I worked for him, not with him— but big deal, right?
“…we’re looking into the fall Roberta LaCross took at Three Friends winery while you were working there.”
“I remember. I already gave a statement to the insurance company.”
“Yes. I read it. I just want to go over a few things.”
“All right.” She fidgeted on the stool. I was getting the strong feeling she didn’t want to talk to me.
“I want confirm that you didn’t wait on Roberta or anyone in her party.”
“I did not.”
“Do you remember about how long they were there?”
“A couple of hours.”
“Do you have a sense of how much they drank? Did you notice a bottle on the table, maybe?”
“I had my own customers. I really don’t know how much they drank.”
Then I remembered Ham wanted me to get people talking and not say so much myself. Well, actually he wanted me to do that when I talked to Roberta’s friends. Which made me ask, “Are you friends with Roberta?”
“I wasn’t then. But she comes into the bookstore and we’ve gotten friendly. She’s quite the character. She’ll talk your ear off. And some of it’s about books, so I don’t really mind.”
“Is that why you got uncomfortable when I asked about how she drank? Because you’re friends?”
“I’m friends with Melanie, too. It’s an awkward spot.”
I decided to be more direct, “Do you think Roberta was overserved?”
“Maybe. Right before she went to the ladies’ room her friends were teasing her about slurring her words.”
“You remember that or she told you that?”
“Both.”
I thanked her and was about to leave when I noticed the children’s section. I walked over and stared at all the books for a moment. Without turning around I asked Penny, “When should you start reading to babies?”
“They say six months, but earlier is better.”
Emerald was almost six months old, so, yeah, she needed books.
It didn’t take too long to figure out the earliest books were the ones that were fifteen or twenty thick cardboard pages long.
Obviously, they were meant to stand up to a baby chewing on them, throwing them around, vomiting on them, and various other infant calamites.
I picked out Good Night Moon, The Very Hungry Caterpillar and Brown Bear, Brown Bear What Do You See?
I also got Where The Wild Things Are and Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day.
They were both too old for her, but I was interested.
I especially wanted to read the Alexander one, because it basically sounded like my life.
I also bought my grandmother a copy of Stupid White Men by Michael Moore.
Nana Cole would hate Stupid White Men and would never read it.
But there was real joy in buying it for her.
For one thing, it was on her credit card, so I was making her pay for it.
For another, when she complained about it, I’d be able to say, “I’m sorry.
But he’s from Michigan. I thought you’d like it. ”
I giggled several times on the way home.